Computer Log

Many years ago I developed the habit of documenting some of my daily activities at work, in a log. Sometimes people would ask me what I did, and I would struggle putting it into words. This was mostly when I became a IBM mainframe system's programmer a job equivalent to a Linux/Unix/Windows administrator, back in the day when people knew much less than they know today. Before that, when I was a programmer, people had or thought they had more of an idea what a programmer did. I would try and explain what a system's programmer was, but it usually amounted to only a few sentences. I thought, they must think, he's employed 40 a week, doing what? So I started documenting, not necessarily detailed [some days more than others], my daily activities. I knew I was usually busy, and keeping a log helped me realize how much I really did. I had a boss ask me dates we did certain things because he knew I kept a log.

A log, especially for someone like me, without a great memory, can help you doing similar things in the future, or stop you from making the same mistakes again. Someone once said something to the effect "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

I kept a static HTML log for over 10 years (and a text log, longer than that) then for over a year to Wordpress!

Problems with WordPress's search NOT finding something and PHP requirements finally caused me to look for alternatives.

At first I thought about  software that worked like WordPress. But that just brings me back to PHP. So I started looking at Static Site Generators (SSG) and became most intriged with 11ty. So I created a Static blog using Eleventy (aka 11ty) SSG!

However I was surprised that I just couldn't copy to my site and run without making changes. Evidently there were one click deploys using netlify. I'm not a web developer and probably just didn't understand the concept.

I simplified using a SSG now I'm supposed use netlify?
Simplify...Use SSG
Complicate...Use netlify?
I also thought the Static Site directory structure was strange. Everything is index.html in a separate folder!
/_site/posts/blog/Topic-1/index.html
/_site/posts/blog/Topic-2/index.html


Anyhoo I finally just wrote my own Python program to create my own log.

My Static Site directory structure
sub_dir/index.html
sub_dir/posts/1.html
sub_dir/posts/2.html